Self-Reliant Skills

You know, like nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, 

computer hacking skills... 

Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills. 

--Napoleon Dynamite

Disasters are not the time to acquire the skills necessary for survival, and not just for survival but for happy living.  Here is a list of skills (in no particular order) that we can work on now so that when we need them we are not scrambling.

• bread making
• canning--both water bath and pressure canning
• hunting, trapping
• solar cooking
• dehydrating
• emergency response training
• yogurt making
• cheese making
• fuel making, like bio-diesel
• gardening
• pruning
• car maintenance and repair
• water purification
• communication, like ham radio or Morse code
• sprouting
• root cellaring
• curing and smoking meat
• sewing
• knitting, crocheting 
• laundering and drying clothes without a washer/dryer
• first aid, CPR
• fishing
• soap making
• fire building
• animal husbandry
• cloth diapering

I am sure that there are more that would be helpful in the event of a disaster.  Any skill that we take the time to learn now, will only serve us better later.  So, there you go folks, lean a new skill and make your life happy.